I just rewatched Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth and it is so great! Well, okay, it’s not his best work, but it’s a nice movie to sit at home and work while you’re sitting on your sofa, banging out blog entries on your BlackBerry. (Do I do that? Yeah, I do.) I actually saw Night on Earth when it came out in 1991 and was a wee youngster, and I fully admit I went to see it because of Winona Ryder, ’cause I luffed her so in the early 90s. (I still luff her, but it’s, you know, complicated.) But since then I’ve had half a lifetime of film school, so I didn’t even appreciate the movie’s full radness until now! Things I overlooked because I did not fully appreciate sunglasses, making love with my entire self or the Spiritually Scandinavian imperative in my life:
DUDE, THAT’S HEATHER #2 AS A CRANKY BAND MANAGER!
Night on Earth is really an omnibus like Coffee and Cigarettes — a series of vignettes around the world, here connected by conversations that take place in cabs. The film starts out in L.A. with a fantastic bit with metalheads on the way to the airport in a cab (driven by Winona Ryder!) Then they get out all drunken and spandexed and get yelled at by their band manager, who’s played by Heather #2 from “Heathers”! It’s such a great thing to discover in a movie!
(Heather #2′s at about 4:50 — plus, I love the dude’s purplish tie-dyed tank. They just don’t make hair metal dudes the same way anymore.)
WINONA RYDER WEARING TOO-BIG AVIATOR SUNGLASSES
I forget sometimes that Winona Ryder was so tomboyish in the 90s, but Night on Earth fully exploits it. I never really bought her as a cabbie who wants to be a mechanic but I love that she tried. I can’t really think of an actress now who’s so interested in deglamorizing herself now, except maybe Kristen Stewart, who I kind of love. But it’s still a real pleasure to see her in the L.A. segment, acting with Gena Rowlands, who I also did not fully appreciate back when I first saw it, not having yet seen A Woman Under the Influence (WONDERFUL) or Gloria (EVEN MORE WONDERFUL).
Winona, pretendin’ she’s scuzzy:
I’D FORGOTTEN HOW AWESOME OF AN ACTRESS BEATRICE DALLE IS
Sometimes I’m astonished there’s this whole generation of people who don’t really know Beatrice Dalle’s acting work. Back in the 80s and 90s, when you needed a hot French babe to play a ferocious, sexy, intense human, you would put her in a movie. She just burns up the screen in anything she’s in, ranging from Betty Blue where she played the ultimate psychotic girlfriend to cinematic history’s hottest cannibal ever in Trouble Every Day. In Night on Earth, she plays a blind woman who fascinates a cab driver and she’s so good, you see why someone wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off her. I loved the part when she talks about making love with her entire self: it’s so French-y. Me, I only make love with one-third of myself, and send the other two-thirds to do psychic errands while I’m otherwise preoccupied.
ROSIE PEREZ GIVES THE BEST “FUCK YOU” ON FILM EVER
I miss seeing Rosie Perez in movies. If the 90s are back, can we bring Rosie Perez back, too? Her fuck-you to Giancarlo Esposito in the NYC part of movie is so perfect, it’s like an object lesson in how to deliver a superb “FUCK YOU” to someone:
1. Act all coy and cute.
2. Wait for response.
3. “FUCK YOU!”
4. Sashay away.
It’s so good. You can see it here at the 3:20 point in the video. I can’t wait to do this to someone one day.
THE HELSINKI SEGMENT TRANSCENDS THE ENTIRE MOVIE
If only for the heartbreaking, subtle, completely utterly fantastic performance from the late great Finnish actor Matti Pellonpää, who appeared in a ton of Aki Kaurismaki films. (If you ever had a soft spot for Jarmusch films, you MUST SEE AKI KAURISMAKI MOVIES — they have a similar strange humor.) I remember thinking how utterly atypical this felt from the other parts of the film but being peculiarly moved by it. It has sort of a naked, serious emotion that didn’t really bubble back into Jarmusch’s work till perhaps Broken Flowers (which I’ll always love for the Tilda Swinton bits, even if it’s not really my favorite Jarmusch film). But now that I watched Night on Earth again, the Helsinki bit is one of my favorite parts, because I can really see and appreciate Jarmusch’s generosity with his actors. Matti Pellonpää just runs with it, and his story he tells at the end is so REAL and the pain is so honest that it makes me genuinely sad he’s no longer alive to grace us with more of his acting genius. Plus: Helsinki. I really need to go!
Now I’m on a “revisit Jim Jarmusch movies” jag. Which one should I revisit next?
